Posts Tagged ‘Recommended Exercises at the Office’

Most health conscious people do stretching usually after getting off from bed in the morning. Stretching usually goes along with yawning. This is a fresh start towards a healthy muscle. But why stretching really works?

Stretching is also a form of exercise. It can be done daily or as part of your healthy routine. Various stretching exercises are enough to aid physical injuries. However, it should be done properly. There should be a guide to proper stretching to make it work and gain good effects to the body. Stretching works to those who have full knowledge in its proper application because it can be dangerous when performed incorrectly. It might be as simple as extending both arms wide after waking up but it is, indeed, requiring a heavy inquiry.

Everyone knows stretching. Even a baby stretches when yawning. It is part of every day’s measure to physical fitness whether you are exercising or not. You could also do stretching after a workout for quicker recovery. It feels good, actually, because a workout usually results to tired body.

Stretching works to the body where there is muscle tightness. You don’t have to stretch your overall body, focus on that part instead. And for the muscles to be flexible enough, stretching properly on a daily basis could greatly help. It also increases blood and nutrient supply to the muscles which can reduce muscle discomfort.

Do you know that stretching can improve your proper posture? Poor posture is not pleasant to look at and stretching can effectively reduce aches and pains in different parts of the body. It can also help the mind for revitalization because it gives off physical and mental tension.

By having innumerable benefits, stretching is truly essential and must be part of one’s healthy habits. This could, by far, an encouragement to do such thing the appropriate way along with daily exercises.

Wake up. Fix the beddings. Take a bath. Eat Breakfast. Prepare for work then leave. This is the typical scenario of an employee working on a day shift. Unfortunately, because time is so swift to pass after waking up in the morning, this falls as a daily routine. Have you forgotten something? Yes, a morning body stretching. Exercises at the office are not that hard to perform even if an employee is in front of his desk and forgot to exercise at home.

Exercise is an activity of a body that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness. This is being performed to strengthen some parts of a human’s body and boost the immune system. Below are some tips and exercises that a worker can do in the office.

1. Stretching: It involves the wrist and arms that can be done even when you are sitting in your chair. You can stretch your wrist, forearm, and lower back. In stretching your wrist, extend your arm in front, palm up and grab the fingers with other hand. Pull your fingers towards you to stretch the forearm and hold it for 20-30mins, and then do this on the other side.

2. Squatting: You can do the chair squatting or one-leg squat. These exercises at the office can help the hip, arms and feet in balance. Just make sure that your chair is stable while squatting. While sitting, you just have to lift up until your hips are hovering over the chair and arms out for balance. Hold these 2-3 seconds, stand all the way up and repeat the process for 16 repetitions.

3. Breathing: 5-10 reps breathing from lower rib cage, from mid-rib cage and from upper rib cage. While sitting upright in the chair with head retracted back, exhale forcefully; breathe out as much air as you can.

4. Squeezing: This is the straight-arm squeeze. Simply sit up straight on edge of chair with feet and legs together, abs engaged, arms extended behind you and palms in. Next is squeezing the arms in against chair back then release. Do 10 repetitions and on last squeeze, move the arms up and down 1 inch and repeat.

Now, who says that there are no exercises at the office while you are busy working? You should try these steps and stay fit all day!

Office work is not really a glam job. We usually say office work is much better than plumbing, carpentry, repair and maintenance. In the office, we get to avoid the heat of the sun, have our own space or table in the office with matching picture of our family or cute dog, have free coffee from the pantry and proudly wear corporate attires. So what are the reasons to be tired and exhausted?

One of the main reasons is sitting. According to studies, prolonged sitting can cause increased LDL cholesterol also known as bad cholesterol. This is our one way ticket to heart problems and other circulatory diseases such as Atherosclerosis and Ischemia.

Effect on bones. Prolonged sitting is bad. Prolonged sitting and slouching is worse. Slouching can strain our neck and cervical vertebrae. When we slouch our spine is pressed unevenly which affects the surrounding tendons and ligaments. One bone problem that we don’t want to have is Osteoporosis.

What do we do?

Move from time to time. This will improve blood circulation in our body thus preventing hypertension and circulatory problems. We can also do a 3-minute stretching starting from head to toe. One more exercise that is really effective is standing up from sitting without any hand support. You can do this repetitively for one minute every day. Lastly, if your boss will allow you to bring an exercise ball, replace your office chair with it. Exercise ball can help us improve our posture and tone our abs.

I hear this a lot- ‘I want to gain benefit from stretching, but I don’t want to injure myself and defeat the purpose of stretching to begin with.’ This is a valid point. Many people will strain a muscle or surround connective tissues from over stretching. There are two main pieces to this: the muscle and the surrounding connective tissue. When a muscle is over stretched it creates micro-tears in the muscle fibers. This can lead to soreness and the ‘pulled muscle’ feeling.

Stretching also targets the surrounding connective tissues. Over stretching the connective tissue can cause the tissue to not rebound like it should and can lead to it loosing it’s inherent elasticity. If this is done routinely it can cause surrounding joint instability.